Quote 1
None of them ever accused me of being responsible for what had happened to Phineas, either because they could not believe it or else because they could not understand it. I would have talked about that, but they would not, and I would not talk about Phineas in any other way (12.14).
This is Gene's moment of greatest loyalty to his friend. By treating Finny's death honestly, he reveres him in a way he never did when Finny was alive and Gene had to protect himself.
Quote 2
The moment was past. Phineas I know had been even more startled than I to discover this bitterness in himself. Neither of us ever mentioned it again, and neither of us ever forgot that it was there (8.108).
Phineas and Gene treat this outburst the same as they do Gene's earlier confession at Finny's house. Their friendship is predicated upon a suspended reality they build together. Or something else.
Quote 3
It struck me then that I was injuring him again. It occurred to me that this could be an even deeper injury than what I had done before. I would have to back out of it, I would have to disown it (5.75).
There are two ways to interpret this passage. Either this is one of Gene's greatest moments of honesty (he would rather live with his shame than hurt Finny by revealing the truth), or it's yet another moment of justification (he pretends he doesn't want to hurt Finny in order to recant the truth and save himself from persecution).
Quote 4
I threw my hip against his, catching him by surprise, and he was instantly down, definitely pleased. This was why he liked me so much. When I jumped on top of him, my knees on his chest, he couldn't ask for anything better. We struggled in some equality for a while, and then when we were sure we were too late for dinner, we broke off (1.46).
Gene will later remark that few scenarios at Devon are not governed by rivalry. This, then, is how he conceives of his friendship with Finny. Wrestling together is a reflection of this healthy sense of competition, on which, as far as Gene knows, their friendship is based. This is why he feels so confused later, when he realizes Finny isn't concerned with competition between them.
Quote 5
What was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this? Was he getting some kind of hold over me? (1.32).
The notion of equality is important to Gene when he considers his friendship with Finny. Much of his hesitation over jumping has less to do with a fear of dying than a fear of subordination, of blindly following Finny's desires.
Quote 6
The point was, the grace of it was, that it had nothing to do with sports. For I wanted no more of sports. They were barred from me, as though when Dr. Stanpole said, "Sports are finished" he had been speaking of me. I didn't trust myself in them, and I didn't trust anyone else. It was as though football players were really bent on crushing the life out of each other, as though boxers were in combat to the death, as though even a tennis ball might turn into a bullet (6.93).
What Gene has done by (allegedly) causing Finny's accident is to break the barrier between the war and the innocence of youth. That's why sports are over – there's no such thing anymore, in Gene's mind, as harmless play. Compare this passage to Finny's conception of sports (in which they are purely good and no one ever loses).
Quote 7
The war would be deadly all right. But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me; there was always something deadly lurking in anything I wanted, anything I loved. And if it wasn't there, as for example with Phineas, then I put it there myself (7.115).
This hits an odd note for Gene. Either he's genuinely masochistic (unlikely), or he's desperately trying to justify his earlier actions.
Quote 8
He needed me. I was the least trustworthy person he had ever met. I knew that; he knew or should know that too. I had even told him. I had told him. But there was no mistaking the shield of remoteness in his face and voice. He wanted me around. The war then passed away from me, and dreams of enlistment and escape and a clean start lost their meaning for me (8.45).
Gene may have stopped himself from enlisting, but by staying he's joined another kind of war, a war of his own making, having to do with Finny. (Against Finny, or with Finny? Tell us what you think.)
Quote 9
Phineas recaptured that magic gift for existing primarily in space, one foot conceding briefly to gravity its rights before spinning him off again into the air. It was his wildest demonstration of himself, of himself in the kind of world he loved; it was his choreography of peace (9.63).
Gene's description reflects the way in which he makes himself and Finny into a dichotomy of warlike enmity and peaceful amity.
Quote 10
I finally identified this as the source of his disillusionment during the winter, this generalized, faintly self-pitying resentment against millions of people he did not know (13.35).
By rejecting World War II, Brinker has created his own private war – against his father and the men like him. Gene's point that we all choose our enemies is reiterated here.
Quote 11
Now, in this winter of snow and crutches with Phineas, I began to know that each morning reasserted the problems of the night before, that sleep suspended all but changed nothing, that you couldn't make yourself over between dawn and dusk. Phineas however did not believe this. I'm sure that he looked down at his leg every morning first thing, as soon as he remembered it, to see if it had not been totally restored while he slept (8.14).
Gene has moved on into this new Winter Session, a time of maturity and growth. Finny is absent, so he misses the transition. When he comes back to Devon, he's still in Summer-mode.
Quote 12
Phineas was a poor deceiver, having had no practice (8.72).
Finny remains the epitome of youthful naiveté, even after his injury.
Quote 13
I waited for Leper; in this wintery outdoors he loved, to come to himself again. Just as I knew the field could never grow again, I knew that Leper could not be wild or bitter or psycho tramping across the hills of Vermont (10.55).
Gene repeatedly associates certain places and times with peace or sanity. And yet…he proves to be wrong, as Leper is just as crazy in the snow as he was in the dining room. This is consistent with what we've seen at Devon, too.
Quote 14
…levels of reality I had never suspected before, a kind of thronging and epic grandeur which my superficial eyes and cluttered mind had been blind to before. They unrolled away impervious to me as though I were a roaming ghost (12.30).
Gene has moved into the adult world, which means leaving his youth behind. That sense of emergence is reflected here as he considers his old self, his young self, dead.
Quote 15
There is no stage you comprehend better than the one you have just left, and as I watched the Jeeps almost asserting a wish to bounce up the side of Mount Washington at eighty miles an hour instead of rolling along this dull street, they reminded me, in a comical and a poignant way, of adolescents (13.3).
And there you have it. The transition from peace to war is much like the transition from youth to adulthood. (Just, you know, with fewer pimples.)
Quote 16
I felt him turning to look at me, and so I looked up. He had a particular expression which his face assumed when he understood but didn't think he should show it, a settled, enlightened look; its appearance now was the first decent thing I had seen in a long time.
He suddenly slammed his fist against the suitcase. "I wish to God there wasn't any war" (12.43-4).
What Finny hates isn't the war, it's the idea of a world he doesn't fit into. Finny may be all deity-like in the Summer Session at Devon, but he's ill-equipped to deal with the harsh realities of the adult world. And that's what he resents.
Quote 17
Bombs in Central Europe were completely unreal to us here, not because we couldn't imagine it […] but because our place here was too fair for us to accept something like that. We spent that summer in complete selfishness, I'm happy to say. The people in the world who could be selfish in the summer of 1942 were a small band, and I'm glad we took advantage of it (2.44).
"Selfishness" is an interesting interpretation of youthful naiveté. As we'll see later in the novel, Gene grows past this state – but Finny never does.
Quote 18
Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever (3.42).
Gene claims that his "moment" is the war, but it is also his own state of enmity concerning Finny – his own private war and the emotions that go with it.
Quote 19
We seemed to be nothing but children playing against heroic men (7.79).
…Yet the battles Gene fights, against his own fear and resentment, are far from child's play.
Quote 20
That night I made for the first time the kind of journey which later became the monotonous routine of my life; traveling through unknown countryside from one unknown settlement to another. The next year thus became the passing dominant activity, or rather passivity, of my army career, not fighting, not marching, but this kind of nighttime ricochet; for as it turned out I never got to the war (10.1).
The idea of Gene constantly traveling but never fighting is an apt one – he's essentially looking for the enemy soldiers but is unable to find them. So he picks something, or someone, to be his enemy. Like Finny.